LETTER: Clarification on bringing in guest lecturers

To the editor:

In a recent letter to the editor, Taylor Read supported Dean Yolanda Flores Niemann’s suggestion that the College of HASS could bring in four graduate students for the cost of one lecturer.  Read’s letter indicated that he believed the Dean had been referring to visiting lecturers, or guest speakers, and I’d like to clear up that misconception.  Unlike a guest speaker that the college might bring in for a one-time talk or lecture (“some famous person that wrote some book that sold x amount of copies,” as Read put it), the lecturers to whom the Dean was referring are regular, non-tenure-track faculty members who teach every semester and who cover many of the general education courses at USU.  Ever taken English 2010?  Then you probably took it from a lecturer. 

Far from being famous, most lecturers are simply dedicated faculty members whose emphasis on teaching allows them to be especially focused on their students’ needs.  Graduate students certainly can (and do) teach many of the courses that lecturers teach, but lecturers are here on a much more permanent basis, and thus can have many more years of teaching experience under their belts. 

Theirs is not a position that should be sacrificed without serious consideration.  And, at least in the English department, the cost of one lecturer is equal to only 1.57 graduate students, not four. 

Lynne McNeill
Lecturer, English Department